Widescreen Wallpapers Archives • Andrew Crusoe

At last, dawn has come.

Since the l’m currently in far-off lands visiting a friend, I’m using the small amount of downtime that I have to complete a project that I’ve been tweaking off and on for the past month. So instead of highlighting a place worth visiting in the “real” world, I’m going to transport you to a strange, vibrant place, birthed from pure imagination. What I’m about to show you is the result of many hours of patience and focus, and I’d love to hear what you think about it in the comments. Even if you despise it!

Today I’m releasing a complete refresh of Crescent Island, and I’m calling it Crescent Dawn. I think this one will be more popular than the previous wallpaper set (called MorningTide), because it’s easier on the eyes, it’s more elegant, and has a more relaxing and dynamic color palette. I’ve even added some surprises.

You remember the old Crescent Island, don’t you?

I created it nine long years ago when I was first getting comfortable with the (now mostly-forgotten) 3D rendering app called Bryce. And, oddly enough, years later I discovered that island that I’d created bared a striking resemblance to Molokini Island in Hawaii, despite the fact that I’d created it years before I’d ever seen photos of that island. (Coincidence, or something more?)

I first revisited Crescent Island in 2008 and released a new version called Crescent Island Nightfall in the summer of that year. While being an improvement over the original (mostly because I understood lighting much better than I had when I’d created it six years previously), it still lacked a certain elegance. The atmosphere still wasn’t quite there.

The Warm Cozy Colors

Fast forward three years to a couple months ago when I began toying with the scene again. That’s when it hit me.

I realized that Crescent Island would be beautiful bathed in the warm, womb-like colors of the morning. So, after hours of experimentation and tweaking, I’m very pleased to present Crescent Dawn to you now. It’s the result of uncounted hours of fine-tuning and revision. (Somewhere between 10 and 10 billion hours.) And, per the suggestion of a friend, I even added some wildlife to give the island a more lively flare. I hope you find it refreshing. I’m especially pleased with how the sky came out.

What do you think?

Get the new wallpaper in Widescreen (up to 2560×1600) →

All content released under a Creative Commons license. These wallpapers look great up to resolutions of 2560×1600. That’s over 4 million pixels of goodness to make your desktop look as incredible as possible.

The beginning of this month is turning out to be a rather busy travel month for me, so instead of sharing a long piece of prose with you, highlighting a place worth visiting, I’m going to transport you to a strange, vibrant place, a product of pure imagination.

I’ll explain.

Nearly nine long years ago, I created a 3D scene in the now mostly-forgotten rendering program called Bryce. The scene wasn’t complex. A lake, a mountain peak, and a couple trees were all that was under its blue sky. I called it “Calm Peak”, and as simple as that wallpaper was, it was a clear step along my path of understanding what made a good image different from a boring image. (You can see the original, “Calm Peak”, in the Byteful Gallery.)

Then, in 2008, I returned to “Calm Peak” and started tweaking it. I wondered what the same place might look like if the atmosphere were actually interesting. You know, something besides typical boring blue with white stratus clouds. So I added some haze into the atmosphere and moved the sun to right about morning time.

Fast forward three years, I discover this often forgotten remnant of my early work. I realized that, knowing what I know now, it could be tweaked and made into something interesting. So last night, after some careful positioning of the elements in the scene, I left the computer to render the final scene at a size appropriate for even the largest monitors (2560×1600 pixels).

The Glorious Result

I awoke this morning to find a vibrant, warm image on my screen. But as I often do, I opened up Photoshop and started tweaking again. I tweaked its specific color curves using a “selective color” adjustment layer (a technique that has utterly changed how I work with color in Photoshop and worth an article all on its own), and I ended up being swept away by inspiration and created 2 derivative flavors of the wallpaper, as well.